Margins and marginality : Jean Genet and the queer essay

Abstract

In opening up the idea of the 'queer essay, one must, in a manner quite conventional and not very queer at all, begin by defining what is meant by the term. Quickly, however, any attempt at defining the 'queer essay' reveals itself not only as difficult because of the term's invisibility throughout the essay's tradition, but also self-contradictory, for to define the queer would be to limit or even eradicate its very queerness. This chapter thus aims to address this taxonomic term, taking Jean Genet's essays as primary examples, while leaving open the possibility of queering the act of taxonomization itself. Let us then begin with taxonomy, which emerges as rather crucial if the categorization of 'queer essay' is indeed a speciation of the essay in a manner similar to how 'the homosexual [is now considered] a species'. In, for instance, Tracey Chevalier's Encyclopedia of the Essay - here taken as an exemplary attempt of division and classification - the term 'queer essay' evades any sort of dedicated entry. Perhaps aptly so, we are left to suppose that it lies instead somewhere 'in between' those 'subjects that must obviously have entries, and those that must obviously not and thus assume that our present term lies cryptically hidden somewhere beneath, or perhaps even beyond, Graham _ Good's 'four main categories of the essay - formal, national, individual, [ and] periodical'.' As is made abundantly clear in the Encyclopedia, these four can be split up indefinitely: there are American essays, autobiographical essays, critical essays, familiar essays, film essays, historical essays, humorous essays, journalistic essays, medical essays, review essays, philosophical and religious essays, satiric essays, essays that are chapters ones that are character sketches, memoirs, dialogues, letters, sermons, diary entries or newspaper columns, and essays that disappear into apothegms and aphorisms. I am leaving out many, but - and especially when one takes Chevalier's compendium as reflective of numerous traditional and canonical theories of the essay - there is, categorically, no such thing as 'queer essay'.